The invention relates to making circuit edits or the physical modification of integrated circuits.
Circuit editing involves physically modifying integrated circuits to remove or add materials in order to alter the original design, enable additional circuit functionality, characterize the operation of the circuit, or correct the function of the integrated circuit. Circuit edits are performed during the initial stages of the integrated circuit's life cycle to understand or improve the product's performance. Circuit edits are often performed because they can quickly enable the circuit modification faster and less expensively when compared to the cost of new lithographic masks and the original wafer fabrication process.
Circuit edits are currently performed with laser and focused ion beam based tools. These tools are reaching the limitations of their capabilities to complete the circuit edit process due to geometry scaling, resolution limits, the change in the materials used to create integrated circuits, and nano-machining end-pointing difficulties.
Thus, there is a need for better ways to do circuit edits.